U.S. forecasters say Hurricane Beryl poses a life-threatening danger to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands as it continues to make its way across the Caribbean Sea.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami says Hurricane Beryl is carrying maximum sustained winds of 240 kilometers an hour, making it a Category 4 storm on the center’s five-level scale that measures a storm’s maximum sustained wind speed and destructive potential. The storm has hurricane-force winds up to 65 kilometers outward from its center and tropical storm-force winds extending out to 295 kilometers.
NHC says that Beryl is moving on a west-northwest path but will turn more towards the west Wednesday night or Thursday, putting it on a path that will bring it near or over Jamaica by Wednesday and the Cayman Islands by Wednesday night or early Thursday.
Hurricane warnings are in effect for Jamaica and the islands of Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, while hurricane watches are in effect for Haiti and Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, where forecasters believe Beryl will reach by Thursday.
Beryl is expected to produce heavy rainfall totals of 10 to 20 centimeters across Jamaica and the southwestern Haitian peninsula through late Wednesday, while the Cayman Islands and Yucatan peninsula will receive 5 to 10 centimeters of rainfall between Thursday and Friday. The hurricane is also expected to trigger dangerous storm surges that could raise water levels between 2 to 3 meters above normal tide levels in Jamaica, and up to one meter above normal tide levels on the Cayman Islands.
NHC is warning that the southern coasts of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, will experience large swells that could cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.
The White House said on its social media account X that U.S. President Joe Biden is closely monitoring Hurricane Beryl and connecting with officials including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They said the administration is ready to support the people of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the region, and urged residents to heed local guidance.
Hurricane Beryl has left behind a trail of death and destruction since making landfall Monday on Grenada’s Carriacou island as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 241 kilometers an hour. Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell of Grenada says Carriacou and the nearby island of Petit Martinique sustained the brunt of Beryl’s force, with scores of homes and businesses flattened in Carriacou and residents cut off from the outside due to downed power lines and damaged roads.
Among those whose homes were damaged on Carriacou were the parents of Simon Stiell, the head of the United Nations climate change agency. Stiell issued a statement saying, “it’s clear that the climate crisis is pushing disasters to record-breaking new levels of destruction.”
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of the archipelago nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines said Tuesday that 90% of homes on Union Island were destroyed.
At least five deaths have been blamed on Beryl, including one person on Grenada’s main island and two people in Carriacou, one person in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and at least one person in northeastern Venezuela.
Beryl grew from a tropical storm to a major hurricane in 42 hours, which has only happened six times in the recorded history of Atlantic hurricanes. The hurricane is also the earliest to reach Category 4 status in the region and the earliest to reach Category 5 strength. Hurricane Dennis became a Category 4 storm on July 8, 2005.
Beryl is the second named storm in the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. Tropical Storm Alberto hit northeastern Mexico in June, killing four people.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has warned of an above-average hurricane season.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
